Source : Times of India
International bestselling author, Haruki Murakami’s book Kishidancho Goroshi has finally released in English.
The book is called Killing Commendatore in English and it follows the adventures of a painter who sets of a chain of fantastical events after stumbling across a strange painting in an attic. The events involve a bell that rings on its own, a teenage girl, a World War 2 Nazi assassination and the kind of depth Murakami is known for.
Talking about the concept that lead to writing Killing Commendatore, Murakami said in an interview that he picked the idea from the depth of his mind and that it is an ode to The Great Gatsby. In an interview with The New York Times he said, “The Great Gatsby is my favourite book. I read it when I was 17 or 18, out of school, and was impressed by the story because it’s a book about a dream — and how people behave when the dream is broken. This is a very important theme for me. I don’t think of it as necessarily the American dream, but rather a young man’s dream, a dream in general.”
He also admitted in the interview that he never read reviews about his work. However, his wife makes sure he always gets the best feedback. “My wife reads every review, though, and she only reads the bad ones out loud to me. She says I have to accept bad reviews. The good reviews, forget it”, he explained to The New York Times.
However, Murakami does enjoy reading the English translations of his work. In another interview to The Guardian he said, “It takes a year or two to translate these big books. So by the time I read the translation, I’ve forgotten everything”.
Killing Commendatore was originally published in Japanese as Kishidancho Goroshi in February 24, 2017. The English translation, Killing Commendatore, released on October 9, 2018.
